The resilience of the sturdy cockroach

I’D WRITE about the weather we’ve come home to but I imagine my readers are heartily fed up with it.

So, I’ll write about an experience I had with a cockroach instead.

Two weeks ago, I was standing in a bar in La Linea de la Concepción, near Gibraltar, when a cockroach ran along the counter, dodged a plate whacked down on top of it (the plate broke) leapt 1.5 metres onto the floor, avoided the flamenco-dancing feet of clientele and disappeared out the door pursued by a cat.

“¡Bicho!” yelled the lady proprietor. “¡Cucaracha, cucaracha!” sang an inebriated customer until she showed him the door.

To me, she apologised profusely, “Pardone la molesta ...” she said.

Actually, I wasn’t molested at all. I like a bar with a bit of action. I shrugged off the fact that the creature was sneaking up behind my plate of olives when I saw it. It was a spotlessly clean bar but for the paper serviettes which the Spanish traditionally throw on the floor, and it wasn’t the woman’s fault that she had cockroaches. Domestic roaches can be found all over the world although not commonly in Ireland, at least not yet.

The woman later told me that she’d seen a cockroach in Gibraltar so big it was chasing a mouse, and the barman admitted to putting them in a microwave oven as a child and watching them revolve in the rays and then walk out unscathed.

I didn’t know whether to believe him but wasn’t about to catch a roach and try it myself. Urban myth has it that in the event of nuclear war, only cockroaches will survive.

Humans can survive up to 800 rems of radiation; more than this is lethal. American cockroaches can take 67,000 rems with no ill effect, while German roaches survive over 100,000, equivalent to a thermonuclear explosion.

Cockroaches can hold their breath for 40 minutes. Some females mate once and are pregnant for life. There are more than 4,000 species in all, of which only 30 are pests. They live everywhere on earth except the polar regions: we have them here, but not the domestic kind. The biggest live in Australia, have an 18 cm (7 inch) wingspan and weigh up to 50 grams (1.75 ounces) while the smallest live in ants’ nests. A running cockroach can make 25 turns per second and the species has been around for some 350 million years.

This is good news for the Thais, who eat them crispy, deep-fried. As far as they are concerned, long may comestible cockroaches multiply and prosper. I have also seen them offered for sale, alive, at a festival in Upper Burma, where they were beautifully arranged, lying flat on their backs in concentric circles in a shallow, circular basket held head-high. How they were persuaded not to jump up and run away ! I can’t imagine. Perhaps some sedative smoke had been blown over them.

On the subject of feet in the air, we came across a very young badger dead on the road the other evening. It wasn’t much damaged and was a pretty, if a somewhat tragic, sight. It had the usual endearing features of the very young, large eyes and soft-focus features.

I have often seen mature road-kill badgers but never one so young: the older specimens are casualties during the mating season where the reproductive drive seems to propel them across motorways and whatever comes in their way.

As a result we have a fine, stuffed specimen of a full-grown West Cork badger on a high shelf in our home. When I’d take it down to allow successive grandchildren a closer look, our poor dog Nicky — she who met an unhappy end a few months ago — would bark at it loudly and fiercely, staying a safe distance away but clearly convinced it was alive and that she should protect us against such interlopers.